The
Declaration of Independence occupies a far smaller place in Donald Trump’s
public rhetoric than in the public rhetoric of any other modern president. Presidential references to the Declaration of
Independence or presidential quotations of such phrases as “all men are created equal” rose steadily from 1933 to 2016, in part because presidents gave an increasing
number of recorded speeches and issued an increasing number of public
proclamations. President Barack Obama
mentioned or quoted from the Declaration of Independence an
average of 31 times a year when he was in office. Donald Trump, on a generous interpretation,
mentioned or quoted the Declaration only 15 times during his first year in
office, despite producing as much paper as any other president. Unlike past presidents, the phrase “consent
of the governed” never drips from his tongue, he never mentions “self-evident
truths,” and barely makes reference to “inalienable rights.”

Trump’s
use of the Declaration is far more vacuous than any other contemporary
president. All presidents make symbolic
use of the Declaration. German-American
Day proclamations note the signers of the Declaration born in Germany. Nevertheless, all modern
presidents before Trump put the Declaration at the heart of crucial policy
arguments. The second president George
Bush repeatedly invoked the Declaration when arguing against abortion rights
and distinguishing American commitments to universal human rights from the
commitments of nations in the “axis of evil.”
Obama repeatedly invoked the Declaration when argument for gay rights,
economic equality and the rights of immigrants. All presidents since Franklin Roosevelt repeatedly asserted the centrality of
the Declaration to American national identity.
Trump’s references to the Declaration, by comparison, are largely pro forma. He does not mention that American identity is
defined by commitment to the principles stated in Jefferson’s second
paragraph. He rarely refers to the
Declaration when making arguments for particular policies. Trump makes substantive references to the Declaration only when claiming Jefferson’s reference to “Creator” supports the presence of religion in public life.

Whether
the Declaration remains a revolutionary document in the United States seemed
doubtful before Trump took office. The Declaration’s assertion that the point
of government was to protect individual rights, promote equality and serve the
public good was highly contested in 1776.
Many people then thought the point of government was to protect the
interests of a few families, promote the one true religion, serve the master
race or rule the world. By the end of
the twentieth century, however, most Americans rested comfortable in the notion
that the Declaration had won the day, that arguments about the purpose of
government concerned how best to protect individual rights, promote equality
and serve the public good, not whether government ought to pursue different
ends. This agreement on what might be called
liberal/republican constitutional ends, explains why both Republicans and
Democrats in the White House each made free use of the Declaration when
championed their particular version of liberal republican
constitutionalism. The Declaration did not take sides in public debate prior to 2016, because all participants agreed on the Declaration's understanding of legitimate constitutional ends.

Donald
Trump’s public indifference to the Declaration suggests that this consensus on
the purposes of government is not as broad as Americans might have thought
during the Bush II and Obama presidencies.
Trump’s rare and vacuous references to Jefferson’s work suggest that he
neither thinks that the Declaration establishes American governing purposes nor
believes that adherence to the Declaration defines American national
identity. He purports to make “American
great again” without understanding that American greatness lies in the national commitment to principles set out in the Declaration, a national commitment to the self-evident truths that “all men are created
equal,” that all persons are “endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness,” that governments “deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of
governed,” and that “it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish”
any government that “becomes destructive of those ends.”